I received a few emails the other day when I posted about Compiz Fusion in the Full Circle Magazine. People were wondering whether I had successfully setup Compiz Fusion in Ubuntu, and what I had done to do it. Unfortunately the only computer that I have Ubuntu installed on right now has an integrated graphics card, and I haven’t been brave enough to see if Compiz Fusion works on it.

With that being said I did some research and found a few good tutorials that should walk you through setting up Compiz Fusion in no time at all. Before I get into that though, I want to point out some of the things that Compiz Fusion is capable of doing. For starters checkout this video that I referenced last week:

The cube has been a famous part of the Compiz effects ever since the beginning, and it is used to switch between your virtual desktops. With the help of some reflections it has never looked so sweet:

–Animations–

What would some eye-candy be without a little animation…

–Expo–

This is an alternative to the cube mentioned above. It manages your virtual desktops in a similar manner, but I think it is a little more productive. All of your virtual desktops are laid out flat and you can easily move windows between them. Here is a demonstration of Expo in action.

–Installing Compiz Fusion in Ubuntu–

Alright here are the guides that I have come across for setting up Compiz Fusion. Be sure to let us know which one works the best for you!

Softpedia – This article is nice because it includes instructions for both GNOME and KDE.

Ubuntu Forums – There are 49-pages of replies in the forum, so if you’re having troubles getting something to work the odds are pretty good that someone else already had the same problem. :)

TechBlog – This article demonstrates how you can update your graphics card drivers before proceeding to install Compiz Fusion.

–Shortcuts to Know–

The "Super" key refers to the Windows key, but I don’t think Linux users like to use the word "Windows". :)